In today's highly competitive business environment, budget orientated planning is insufficient for a large corporation to survive and prosper. Indeed, rapid-paced changes in trade, technology and investment patterns are elements that are impacting each business in one way or another. That is why, to ensure the permanence of their business, each firm must embark on an efficient strategic planning process. A strategic plan is a "road map" which leads an organization from where it is now to where it would like to be in five or ten years. In other words, "strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce decisions and actions that guide and shape what the organization is, what it does, and why it does it" (Bryson, 1995). Moreover, hospitality and leisure industries are increasingly recognised as important to the competitiveness of the worldwide economy that is why, "strategic Planning is essential to survival in food service and hospitality today" (Feltenstein, 1992). The following report is going to critically analyse the view that managing the strategic planning process in the hospitality industry is no different to any other industry. "It is rarely clear whether hospitality should be conceived as a product, a process, an experience, or all three!" (Brotherton, 1999, p. 165) As it is seen in the literature, many definitions are related to the hospitality concept. Thus, Cassee and Reuland (1983, p. 144) proffered a definition of hospitality as "a harmonious mixture of food, beverage, and/or shelter, a physical environment, and the behaviour and attitude of people".
[...] Moreover, the hospitality industry is characterized by a high turnover, but in order to avoid the development of a turnover culture some hotel chains set up some retention bonuses to influence employees to stay. Thus, the well-known Marriott Hotel chain offers its employees a large range of compensations such as medical and life insurance; annual salary increases; hotel room discounts and ongoing training and career development. The fact is having satisfied employees is especially important for hospitality organizations (Berry, 1981; p. [...]
[...] Financial strategy Nowadays, in a worldwide competitive environment the hospitality industry is characterised by the concept of multi-unit, which reflects the current rise of large firms increasingly dominated by large players such as Accor, Hilton, Marriot International (Jones p. 155-164) In other words, large hospitality firms are geographically dispersed, often over very large areas and that creates conditions particularly challenging for the operations and financial management functions. Financial strategy selection is influenced by the corporations overall goals and their mission statement. [...]
[...] Nevertheless, if most of the manufacturing firms have to use the 4P's strategy the fact is that for the service industry as the hospitality industry this strategy has been expanded to the 7P's. was added, to recognize the importance of the human element; “Process” was added to reflect the fact that services, unlike physical products, are experienced as a process at the time that they are purchased and “Physical evidence” reflects the physical surroundings associated with a service encounter or retail location. [...]
[...] Thus, it can be maintained that compare to manufacturing organizations, the hospitality industry requires a strong Human Resource Management to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic deployment of a highly committed and capable workforce. That is why, in the hospitality industry each organization has to develop formal policies and procedures for handling uncertainty but also strong culture need to be built in order to guide employees in handling the problems customers can create (Bowen and Ford p. 394-401). In this way, organizations and managers in the tourism and hospitality industry face real challenges in recruiting, developing and maintaining a well managed and a well-motivated workforce which is focused on offering the best quality service to reach customers' expectations. [...]
[...] and Robert, C. (2004), “What experts say about managing hospitality service delivery systems”. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management Volume 16 Number pp. 394-401 Brotherton, B (1999), “Towards a definitive view of the nature of hospitality and hospitality management” International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Volume 11 Number pp. 165-173 Bryson, J. M. (1995), “Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations”. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.# Cassee, E.H. (1983), "Introduction", in Cassee, E. H., Reuland, R. (Eds),The Management of Hospitality, Pergamon, Oxford, pp.13-22. [...]
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